Aaron Hernandez: A hometown boy’s sad legacy

In Bristol, Conn., where the ex-Patriots player grew up, the signs of trouble go back to at least 2006.

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By
W. Zachary Malinowski
Posted Aug. 17, 2013 @ 3:25 pm

BRISTOL, Conn. -- Aaron Hernandez, the former Pro Bowl tight end for the New England Patriots, is rapidly becoming a distant memory in his hometown.

At Bristol Central High School, the main hallways are lined with scores of championship trophies for baseball, basketball, cross-country, football and soccer. There’s a plaque that recognizes D.J. Hernandez, Aaron’s older brother, who was named the Gatorade High School Football Player of the Year for Connecticut in 2004.

Aaron Hernandez might be the greatest football player that Connecticut has ever produced and there have been plenty of good ones, including more than 160 who have played in the National Football League. Among them: Floyd Little, of New Haven, who rushed for nearly 5,000 yards with the Denver Broncos, and Bill Romanowski, a linebacker from Vernon, who starred on four Super Bowl championship teams.

He also has been named a suspect in multiple shootings in Florida, where he starred on the gridiron for the University of Florida.

But back in this city of 60,000, known for being the headquarters of the sports network, ESPN, local residents are tired of hearing about the hometown hero who has disgraced this leafy, close-knit community about 30 miles southwest of Hartford. Several people approached by a Providence Journal reporter declined to talk about him, and even the secretary for Mayor Arthur J. Ward said her boss “is no longer talking about Aaron Hernandez.”

It’s difficult to pinpoint when Aaron Hernandez’s life took a turn for the worse and he began to exhibit violent tendencies. But just about everybody notes the unexpected death of his father, Dennis Hernandez, who died in January 2006 at age 49 from complications following hernia surgery.

Aaron Hernandez was 16 years old.

His mother, Terri, and his brother, D.J, told USA Today in 2009 that Aaron began hanging out with a tough crowd and smoking marijuana.

“He would rebel,” Terri Hernandez told the newspaper. “It was very, very hard and he was very, very angry. He wasn’t the same kid, the way he spoke to me. The shock of losing his dad, there was so much anger.”

In Massachusetts, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson said he has chatted with Hernandez, and the prisoner told him that he was “very close to his father.” Hernandez also indicated that his unexpected death deeply affected him.

Dennis Hernandez was a big deal in Bristol and everyone knew him as “The King.” Back in the mid-1970s, Hernandez and his twin brother, David,were outstanding athletes who excelled in baseball, basketball and football.

Herb Kenny, who played basketball at nearby Maloney High School in Meriden, remembered them as tough, physical players. They never played dirty and were gentlemen off the court, he said.

“They were just awesome athletes,” said Kenny, who later played basketball and lacrosse at Connecticut College. “They were good-looking guys and strong as hell. I don’t think we ever beat them.”

In 1974, Dennis Hernandez rushed for 1,044 yards for the Bristol Central football team.

The Hernandez twins played football for University of Connecticut. David Hernandez transferred to the University of Louisville.

Once their playing days ended, the Hernandez boys returned to Bristol. Dennis got a job as a janitor at Bristol Eastern, the other public high school in the city, and David was hired as a state corrections officer.

Dennis lived for those Saturday afternoons when his boys, Aaron and D.J., donned the maroon and white and dominated the football field for the Bristol Central Rams. D.J, three years older than Aaron, was the quarterback, and he followed in his father’s footsteps and played four years at UConn.

Thousands turned out for Dennis Hernandez’s funeral at O’Brien Funeral Home on Lincoln Avenue in Bristol. His obituary, read, in part, “Dennis was employed at Bristol Eastern High School and he took great pleasure in watching his sons play sports and attending their games.”

Aaron posted mind-boggling statistics at the high school. In 2005, he caught 67 passes for 1,807 yards, and that same season he had a game against Newington High School during which he caught passes totaling 376 yards.

Over four years, Hernandez had 172 receptions for 3,677 yards. He holds state records for receptions in a game, season and four-year career. He was a strong student and graduated from Bristol Central in 3˝ years. Nonetheless, despite his success in the classroom and on the football field, problems trailed him.

Kevin Morrell, a detective lieutenant in the Bristol Police Department, said Hernandez began hanging around the shabby home of his uncle, Andres “Tito” Valderrama, on Lake Avenue, who was married to the former Ruth Hernandez, the older sister of Dennis and David Hernandez.

Morrell described the house as a place “where anything goes,” and troubled men such as Carlos A. Ortiz, Ernest Wallace and Jeffrey D. Cummings, all convicted criminals, frequently slept there or hung around.

Investigators have searched the house four times for evidence that would link Aaron Hernandez to the murder of Lloyd and a double murder last year in Boston. The police have seized a silver Toyota 4-Runner with Rhode Island plates from the garage owned by Hernandez’s uncle. They say the sport utility vehicle may have been used in the Boston slayings.

Cummings, who has been in and out of prison, had been married to the Valderammas’ daughter, Tanya.

In Massachusetts, prosecutors from the Bristol County district attorney’s office ordered the arrests of Ortiz, 27, and Wallace, 43, as suspected accomplices in the murder of Lloyd. They are being held without bail in a Massachusetts jail.

Tanya Cummings-Singleton also is jailed in Massachusetts. Search warrants note that she bought a bus ticket for Wallace after he fled Massachusetts and Connecticut following Hernandez’s arrest for first-degree murder. He surrendered to the police in Miramar, Fla. On June 30, a few days after Hernandez was charged, Cummings-Singleton’s husband, Thaddeus Singleton III, 33, was killed in a car accident in Farmington, Conn. He had a lengthy criminal record and had served time in prison for a home invasion and drive-by shooting in Bristol.

Authorities say Ortiz and Wallace were with Hernandez early June 17 when they picked up Lloyd, 27, at his Boston home and brought him to North Attleboro, Mass., where he was shot five times in an industrial area about a half-mile from Hernandez’s home.

Cummings-Singleton is in custody for failing to testify before a second grand jury in Massachusetts investigating the murder.

Last month, William M. McCauley, first assistant district attorney for Massachusetts’ Bristol County, said Wallace had a room in Hernandez’s $1.3-million house in North Attleboro. He also said Hernandez provided support for his friend, who kept a handgun in his guest room. Wallace, described as the football star’s “right-hand man,” has an extensive criminal record dating to 1988 and has served time in prisons in Connecticut and New York.

Investigators say Ortiz also was a frequent guest at Hernandez’s house.

Morrell, the Bristol police detective, said Ortiz and Wallace hung around the Cambridge Park Apartments, Bristol’s only housing development for low-income residents. Morrell said Wallace was a suspect in a past fatal shooting and Ortiz fathered a child with a woman who lives there.

A street gang, known as DooWop, is well-established in the project, which has about 90 units in a series of rundown brick and clapboard buildings, the detective said. Hernandez visited friends in the development, including Ortiz and Wallace, Morrell said. A few years back, he said, Ortiz was arrested for robbing a man after he had been murdered there.